Vital £8.5 million investment for Prestwick Airport

Posted on 22nd November 2016 at 12:53 pm.

Written by Team Writer

Aircraft maintenance firm Chevron Aircraft Maintenance has invested £8.5m into Prestwick Airport. The company’s aim is to create a “world-class centre of excellence” for various aspects of the airport such as aircraft engineering and maintenance and training. The expansion will create 82 jobs, 67 of which will be highly specialised positions, while expecting to increase turnover by around £10 million,taking it to £19 million by 2021.

Keith Brown, Holyrood economy secretary said: "The company’s investment, which is being supported by our economic development agency Scottish Enterprise, underlines their commitment to Scotland and is great news for the local Ayrshire economy.

This development will bring many new and highly-skilled jobs to the Prestwick area. I wish the team every success with the new venture and look forward to hearing of their achievements."

Shouldered by a regional assistance grant of £2m from Scottish Enterprise, the redevelopment which will begin towards the start of 2017, has been spurred on by increased levels of customers travelling and market demand. The facilities that the airport possesses provide great space for the firm’s line maintenance support operations, including a maintenance and overhaul facility, a training school, an aircraft decommissioning site and on-site office and workshop which features;

Neil Morris, managing director of Chevron Aircraft Maintenance, said: "The airport is in an excellent location at the midway point of the Great Circle Route making it a convenient stop-off point for the many aircraft that have existing flight planning over the airport."The facility will enable the Chevron group to handle a large range of aircraft and we hope that we can offer additional benefits to Glasgow Prestwick’s existing customer base across passenger, cargo, military, executive and general aviation."

Glasgow Prestwick Airport chief executive officer Ron Smith said: "Chevron will bring in additional revenue for us through this lease but we also hope that this will provide us with an additional selling point for passenger and cargo airlines, and other aviation customers including executive, military and general aviation to operate services to and from Glasgow Prestwick Airport."

Prestwick Airport holds the position of 5th busiest airport in Scotland in terms of passenger traffic, falling short to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness Airport, although holds the title of largest Scottish airport in terms of area over land. Passenger levels hit 2.4 million in 2007 after a decade of growth thanks to low budget airlines such a Ryanair. Sadly in recent years the airport has seen a big dip in interest with around 600,000 passengers using the facility in 2015. Let’s hope the redevelopment brings big changes for them!

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One Response to “Vital £8.5 million investment for Prestwick Airport”

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